The Bill Blass Speaker Series was established in 2002 with a bequest from fashion designer Bill Blass, a native Hoosier and friend of Indiana University. The Bill Blass Speaker Series is presented and hosted by the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design and the College of Arts and Sciences.
Bill Blass Speaker Series
Past speakers
- Denise Nicole Green, Associate Professor at Cornell University in the Department of Fiber Science and Apparel Design and Director of the Cornell Fashion + Textile Collection
- Sharon Kilfoyle, textile artist
- Alastair Macleod, chairman of UK-based Hand & Lock Embroidery
- Fran Morris-Rosman, Director of the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation
- Lesley Frowick, Halston’s niece and author of the book Halston: Inventing American Fashion
- Joanne Eicher, Author, dress scholar and Professor emeritus, University of Minnesota
- Barbara Natoli Witt, jewelry artist
- Alexander Julian, Fashion and Textile Designer
- Brian Smith, founder of Ugg boots
- Carmen Benevente, artist and author of Ninhue: Stitching Chilean Rural Life
- Erich Biehle, textile designer
- Jo Paoletti, Dress scholar and author of Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America and Sex and Unisex: Fashion, Feminism, and the Sexual Revolution
- Joe Kucharski, Costume Designer and Project Manager, Walt Disney Imagineering
- John Tiffany, author of Eleanor Lambert: Empress of Fashion
- Julian Roberts, fashion designer and instructor of Subtraction Cutting
- Natalie Chain, fashion designer and founder of sustainable fashion company Alabama Chanin
- University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and paper/textile artist Mary Hark
- Susan Neill, Exhibitions Planning Director, the Field Museum
- Lora Morlock, lecturer, Ryerson University